#28: For Emma, Forever Ago

For Emma, Forever Ago

Bon Iver

2008

JagJaguwar (US) (Indie Label)

Peak position on charts:

#42 - UK Albums Chart

#64 - US Billboard 200

"'Cause blinded, I was blindsided." laments Justin Vernon on For Emma, Forever Ago ("Blindsided"). He never saw any of it coming, and he needed an escape.

Bon Iver began simply as Justin Vernon's isolation project in 2007. His band, DeYarmond Edison, had just broken up, he had lost his girl, and he caught mononucleosis. In a mission to seek relief, he left his home in Raleigh, North Carolina for his father's old cabin in northern Wisconsin. He had no intention of writing or recording anything during that time, but as the winter set in (Bon Iver is a play off the French expression "bon hiver", meaning "good winter"), the music began to flow out of him, and pieces of an album started coming together. That winter, Vernon himself recorded every instrument on what became a nine song album.

Upon completion of the album, he intended to send demos of the songs out to different recording companies with the idea of getting them re-mastered and well-produced, but he was encouraged by his friends and family to release it as it was. He listened, and self-released it in July of 2007. It garnered so much positive reception from critical media that the album was eventually picked up by JagJaguwar in the winter and re-released with the label in February of 2008.

For Emma, Forever Ago, on first listen, is an extremely simple album: an acoustic guitar with a melodic vocal line, and occasional snare drums sneaking into select songs. And in truth, that simplicity is the basis of the album. Vernon merely records a guitar line, sings his lyrics, throws on a few extras, and just like that, an album is made. But that wasn't quite enough for him; it lacked depth. So, he countered his solitude by over-dubbing with backup vocals, and over-dubbing with more backup vocals, and overdubbing, and so on. What resulted was an extremely complex set of harmonies, with anywhere from "80 to 500" separate voices, he once said in an interview.

And yet, even with a number of tracks this vast, he manages to maintain the simple beauty that his original minimalist methods evoked.

Each and every song is extremely delicate, as if the removal of any one of the tracks would destroy it entirely.

Symbolic.

Lyrically, Vernon sings of looking in the rear view mirror and not fully understanding what occurred, but having the strength to move on anyways. He sings tenderly, but his voice his distinctly full of sorrow still. And yet, his time of solitude seems to have given him exactly what he was searching for: not closure, necessarily, but the strength to push through.

Looking on the past is still sad, but Justin Vernon realised he could leave the sorrow behind and look ahead.

"What might've been lost

don't bother me."

-- "The Wolves (Act I and II)"

The song "Flume" is embedded in a link below.

____________________________________________________________________________________

Recommended Tracks:

Flume (3.39)

Skinny Love (3.58)

The Wolves (Act I and II) (5.22)

For Emma (3.41)